West Papuan National Flag Day: 1st December

The 1st
of December is West Papuan National Day or National flag
day. Fifty two years ago on the December 1, 1961, in the
then Dutch colony of West New Guinea, the West Papuan
national flag, called the Morning Star, was flown for the
first time officially beside the Dutch Tricolor. At that
ceremony, as the Morning Star flag was raised, Dutch and
Papuan military and police saluted and accompanied by a
marine band playing the national anthem, “My Land
Papua”.

The Dutch were finally about to give the West
Papuan people their freedom. However, it is one of the great
tragedies that at their moment of freedom it was cruelly
crushed and West Papua was basically handed over to
Indonesia in 1963.

After six years administration of the
province, Indonesia held a sham referendum called the Act
of Free Choice under UN supervision. Only 1,022
handpicked voters - one representative for approximately
every 700 West Papuans - were allowed vote, and under
coercion, voted to remain with Indonesia. The West Papuan
people call this the ‘act of no choice’

Flag raising
is one of the ways the West Papuan people protest the
injustice the suffer under Indonesian control.The Morning
Star flag is a symbol of Papuan identity and seen as
treasonous by the Indonesian state.

Filep Karma is the
best-known political prisoner in West Papua and is serving a
sentence of 15 years for simply raising the West Papuan
flag.

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